The Ins and Outs...

Domestic Bliss 

It's come to my attention that I have been negligent in the production of an all about me and my materialistic self post. Unlucky you :'(   My domestication has been about as blissful as stale moon pies and fizz-free RC Colas.

My teenage years were plagued by mom and dad's repeated threat that they were going to shovel through and trash all those heaps of crumbled clothes, scattered papers, books, pencils, pens, magazines, newspaper clippings, letters, cards, and last week's lunch; to see if my floor was actually still there.  Of course, they never did.  I didn't either, so I was always a messy little teenage twerp.

Moving out on my own, I blossomed overnight into a controlling domesticated freak.  My ten years younger sister proclaimed that she could eat right off my spotless floors, they were that excessively clean.  I never did catch her plopping down on the floor to lick up food she had just thrown there (I would have almost killed her), so I'm sure she was joking - wasn't she?

I did have this perfection quirk that kicked in just after I escaped all parental supervision.  I became my own worst enemy, slaving to the tune of the Dishpan-Washing Machine-Vacuum Cleaner-Dust Rags Blues.  It felt as if a piece of my mom's soul had torn itself from her disapproving heart to haunt me in my adult life.

I toiled in sacrificial compliance and meekness on the home front for decades, until I was staring at my old age impatiently waiting for me above the near horizon, and a strange thing happened - my brain finally relinquished a tidbit of wisdom.   

Mulling over my last fifty years, I had to agree I was an idiot! With this revelation, my housecleaning flipped from sweep-dust-mop to dig-retrieve-destroy.  I tried trashing the clutter from my existence - poof!  Well, not really poof!  More like pooooooooooooooof.

Years it took to go through my bargain basement menagerie, salvaging a bit here, stashing a bit there, then tossing here and there into the trash heap.  Do you really understand how hard it is to just let go of things?  It's downright near impossible!!!  

Finally free from a lifetime of clutter, a strange thing has happened once again.  My husband now calls me high-end,  high-maintenance.  Who?  Me???  My brain assures me it's just called finally getting what I really want - much less, but much better ;)

Oh...

I wouldn't advise eating right off my floors either these days, unless you relish a bit of lint and fur mixed in.

Latique Crystal Cat   
Birthday, Christmas, and everything-in-between present

from husband for 2012.

Complicated Webs Life has Woven

I love blogging.  I loved blogging.  It's complicated.  I thought I would have lots of friends.  I sort of had lots of "friends", but they dropped like flies by the wayside and now there are almost none. Not satisfied, I'm moving on - priorities are changing - I want more, not less.  

While I have those I love and animal friends that have warmed my heart over the years, if life had offered me a second chance to get it right, I would have chucked it all to travel down that path - but life's not that simple.  I live with the basic tapestry I foolishly weaved in my youth, and add extensions onto it as I try to salvage the mishmash of my experiences to create a masterpiece with flaws.

Granted I may be the only one that sees my shortcomings, but I do know what they are.  While it is hard to forgive, I find it impossible to forget.  I must choose not to fixate on this to any great extent, as I'm positive that someone up there who "loves" me would give me Alzheimer as my mode of forgetting.  Some things are better just left as they are.

While I'm not ready to flush my blog completely out of existence, a post will most likely never appear until after a long nap.  I'm a dabbler of all that is creative, but for now I'm a writer and I want to see how far I can push that concept.  As with anything I take on, I approach it with a passion to be the best, to push it to the edge to see if I fall off or miraculously sprout wings.


Off to see the Wizard

My workroom is the room that has never seen any work except that of the vacuum cleaner sucking up all that feline fur that lovingly coats everything.  We have affectionately dubbed it the "Cat's Room".  It has a four foot high gate across the entrance with one of the bars removed so the cats can freely move through it, the dog cannot.  It is their escape from a canine that acts before he thinks, and has been known during his excitement to have unintentionally trampled a feline or two.  

This room has problems.  It's always had problems.  It's not a space that feels good and collects clutter like cat fur to static electricity.  I like maxing out with my environmental consciousness, and have arranged or enhanced my home and gardens for health and happiness.

Years ago I worked out all my Feng Shui charts, but don't even ask me to explain the concept these days.  The methods of finalizing my charts is lost from memory.  I'd have to study it all again.  I'm researching divining and space purification, as this room needs the negativity traveling through it to be cured.  It's a death trap for creativity.

The complications can be overwhelming when one's money point and artistic space are in the same noxious energy filled room. Perhaps it contributes to the feline's many health issues...perhaps.  I feel that since we are part of the universe, we are to some degree attached to everything in the universe.

In younger years I studied my astrological link to the skies all the way to my houses in houses, if I remember it correctly.  I traveled farther than most would venture to complete whom I was in the realm of the entire cosmos.  All I remember of that experience is that I am totally water...totally.  Sometimes I feel as if my soul holds the sum of energy, positive and negative, of all existence. It's why I need to create; it's also why I need to push away at times and just remember to breathe deeply.

Even when uncluttered this room looks complicated.

Craft supplies are stuffed in every drawer and box.

Passions for beauty and reading, although I haven't read

a novel in years - only short stories.

Contemplation corner for feline dreams 

and roguish aspirations.

A computer of my own in the near future.

Hot Chocolate on a Cold Winter Day

Discovering my storehouse of knowledge on becoming a published writer is empty, I've had to cram my head full of reading to soak up a bit of the culture of the writer's world.  It's a battle to not let myself feel inferior; to not just walk away.  I'm tired of all the complexities of life's battles, yet here I am treading water with liquid up to my eyeballs once again.  I hope I never learn to give up.

The short story world is splitting at the seams with talent, semi-talent, no talent; it reeks of submissions past their shelf life being shoved into the trash compactor.  Dissecting my three short, short stories; I've begun patching them up to stand up to the talent out there.  I began to look at the possibility of a short story, but the determination to cough up 8,000 words of perfection seems out of my reach.  

A novel - what am I thinking - 120,000 words is a hell of a lot of words.  It's unfathomable!  Yet here I am again reading up on novel writing.  I'm mulling over my short story idea, which on paper is now 1152 words.  I cannot even figure out how to outline the events from beginning to end.  I play it over in my mind rerun after rerun, working out the conversations and scenes in my imagination and under my breath, and even speak the words out loud when husband isn't around.

Last night I wrote on paper the outline for my short story turning into a novel.  I wrote it out at 2:00 in the morning in the bathroom after brushing my teeth.  I can create this story, but how, who knows?  I'm going to tackle it right after I boot out that bad karma that's festering in the Cat's Room my workroom.  

Where is that Alternate Universe when I need one?

Blog Post about Feng Shui